Al Smith (playwright)

Al Smith is a British writer.

Plays for theatre include Chalk (2005), which he wrote and directed for the Edinburgh University Theatre Company at the Bedlam Theatre, Enola (2005) for the Fringe, for which won the Three Weeks Editors Award, the Sunday Times Playwriting Award and was selected for NSDF, "The Astronaut Wives Club" (2006) for the National Youth Theatre's Soho Sextet at the Soho Theatre, Radio (2006) which premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe before transferring to the Soho Theatre, London and Brits off Broadway Festival at 59E59, New York City. For Radio, he won the Sunday Times Playwriting Award for a second time. In 2008, he wrote "The Bird" at the Fringe which was staged alongside "The Bee" by Matt Hartley. In 2013, he staged a reading of "Harrogate" at the HighTide Festival in Suffolk. He has been a Playwright-in-Residence at the Finborough Theatre, London through which he won a Pearson Bursary for Radio, was selected for the New Voices 24 Hour Plays at the Old Vic, and was on attachment to the Paines Plough / Channel 4 Future:Perfect Scheme. He has written several short plays for Paines Plough, Drywrite and the Miniaturists. He is currently under commission to the Gate Theatre.

For television, he participated in the 2006 Writers Academy at the BBC and subsequently became part of the regular writing team on Holby City and EastEnders. Between 2008 and 2011 he Co-Created and Co-Exec Produced The Cut, which ran to three series on BBC2.

For BBC Radio 4, he adapted his play "Radio" for an Afternoon Play (2006), wrote the series "The Postman of Good Hope" (2009) and the series "Life in the Freezer" (2013), both for Woman's Hour.

In 2012, he won the inaugural BFI/Wellcome Trust Screenwriting Prize for his feature script "HalfLife".